If you’re wondering:“When is it safe for my daughter (or son) to start strength training?”
The answer is YES. The answer is whenever you feel like they are mature enough to follow instructions and you know of a qualified coach available to teach them proper technique, at SYNERGI we start working with children as young as 5.
As parents we all have reservations and concerns for our children’s safety – that’s what being a mum is all about right?
Is it safe?
Won’t it stunt their growth?
What about growth plate injuries?
Not Only Is Lifting Safe, It Prepares Children for Life
Children are well children. Watch a 5 year old play at a park – look what their bodies are capable of. They jump, swing, hanging, bounce, collide with one another, fall, bend, crawl. Without even entering the gym they are already moving and testing their bodies and pushing their bodies much more than we do as adults. Weight lifting can help children develop key movement patterns, vital to health and protection from injury. For less active or naturally “non- sporty” kids, weight lifting is great too. The only one they are competing against is themselves, there is less comparison. Team sports often call for for athletic abilities such as running and sprinting (I was never a runner as a child) so weight lifting suited me down to the ground!
By teaching young children how to properly perform basic movement patterns (squat, push, pull, hinge, lunge), their biomechanics improve (the way they move their body) their body awareness improves (their awareness of how their body moves when they ask it to, aka coordination) , and most importantly their confidence improves ( their ability to do more difficult tasks and prove to themselves they can take on new challenges)
Furthermore, an injury to a growth plate has never been reported as a result of weight training, and among competitive youth weightlifters, no injuries were reported after a full year of training. In fact weight lifting is significantly safer than football , rugby, athletics or gymnastics – in fact many other sports. Not only has weightlifting been shown to enhance performance, it prevents injuries in other sports and activities.
Loading a barbell on their back won’t cause them to shrink or stop growing; youth resistance-training programs have little influence on growth in height and weight.
Coaching a child through a strength-training program should prioritize technique over everything though — the strength gains are a happy byproduct. It’s not about shifting the most weight but learning to do it well! Proficient movement is key!
Weight lifting helps with body image! Mothers, we need more of that, not all girls are created skinny! I have never sat in the skinny camp – my mother always said I ‘carried a bit of extra weight’ or referred to me as ‘Amazonian’. Now I can lift my own weight on my back when I back squat, I can pick my bodyweight off the floor when I deadlift and feel like a bad ass strong woman. Regardless of my weight on the scale or what size my jeans are, I’m proud of my body and what it can do. Sisters, daughters, friends, nieces, wives, we need you to show up for the girls in your life and show them how amazing their body is.
When you are able to teach a young child how to move properly you erase self-doubt from their thinking and “can’t” from their vocabulary. You give them the confidence to go after whatever they want in this world.
